1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally in the field of electronic devices and systems. More particularly, the present invention is in the field of delivery of power to electronic devices and systems.
2. Background Art
The use of personal electronic devices permeates almost all aspects of daily life. Many such devices are kept in a mode of constant readiness for use, and the cumulative effect of this mode and the ever-increasing number of devices can be a heavy burden on existing energy resources. Further, as more and more feature innovations are brought to market, the complexity in leveraging those features often surpasses the conveniences they offer.
One such feature is the act of pairing one electronic device to one or more other electronic devices in order to combine features without requiring that one device incorporate all desired features all the time. While the distributed functionality opens up a wide range of new, desired cooperative features, pairing devices to enable the cooperative features can entail many individual manual steps that may require more than just a general comfort level with new technology to complete.
Moreover, conventional power supplies for electronic devices are typically unconfigurable and feature-poor, possibly just to reduce manufacturing cost, but perhaps also because general safety and liability concerns steer manufacturers towards designing their power supplies to be physically differentiated from product to product so as to limit the risk of damage due to incompatible voltage and current specifications. Because each power supply is typically designed to serve only a very limited market for a limited amount of time (e.g., the life of a single product), on the whole, there can be little incentive to design efficiency or convenience features into each iteration of a generic power supply. Additionally, in the case of portable electronic devices, the lack of interchangeability frequently leads to consumers having multiple collections of power supplies at, for example, home and work, which can serve to compound the waste and inconvenience normally indicative of conventional power supplies and powering systems.
Thus, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a powering system that can be readily adapted to power various electronic devices efficiently and accurately while increasing the convenience of using those electronic devices.